We built high quality backlinks by sending Santa Claus on a UK-wide test drive in an electric sleigh!

The Brief

Renault Retail Group is the UK’s number one dealer of new and used Renault vehicles.

Renault Retail Group tasked iThinkMedia with building strong links to their website through an innovative PR campaign, promoting the 100% Electric Renault Zoe.

Our Strategy

We identified electric car purchasing pain points as:

They don’t travel far on one charge

You can’t fit much in the boot

We asked ourselves – who travels a long way, carrying a lot of stuff? Santa Claus of course!

In December 2017 we turned a Renault Zoe into an electric sleigh and sent Santa on a four day test drive around the UK to see if he should retire the reindeer and go electric.

Our news hook was scientific research into how much CO2 reindeer produce and how much they cost to run vs the Renault Zoe.

To engage the public we filled the boot with 1,000 free gifts for Santa to hand deliver to anyone who contacted him on social media using the hashtag #SantaGoesElectric.

We sent press releases to local, national, automotive, environment and lifestyle media and websites.

Miles of smiles, lots of backlinks

Santa visited London, Cardiff, Cannock and Manchester, covering 820 miles with zero CO2 output and delivering 1,000 free gifts to those who used the hashtag #SantaGoesElectric. He also spread cheer to local communities by visiting charities. Newspapers, websites and a radio station covered the story and linked to the Renault Retail Group website.